I’ve always had luck chip budding peaches. I did quite a few in August. I find it very easy to do after you get the hang of it. Best thing is you have a long period of time to get it done. I’ve never tried grafting them in spring.
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I believe splice grafting to be the quickest of all grafting methods requiring the least skill- hard to say which of the two is more important to me.
I got time timing and the temp right but grafted scions onto older wood, 2-3 old wood of the existing tree. This was because I wanted to change the whole tree /all those scaffolds into new varieties.
Is that why my grafts mostly failed? I did T budding on older wood with a few successes, probably a fluke.
Not necessarily, but to me, the easiest and highest percentage of takes comes from grafting onto one year shoots.
I don’t want to give the impression that I’m some kind of stone fruit grafting expert as I’ve only been doing it for 3 or 4 years thanks to inspiration supplied by Scot. Last season was the first where I made a large quantity of stonefruit grafts- well over 100 for sure- maybe double that, all on bearing age trees.
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I almost always chip bud onto this years wood. I’ve done it on older wood, but not sure how much success i’ve had.
I have had success in lower temps, but it is later in the season when things are really cranking already. I have also had plenty of failures because we had two weeks of heat, I grafted, and we had a week of cool from that grafting time on and nothing made it. In a cooler climate you might want to wait until 2-3" leaves to be safe, and also look for the warmest stretch. They have done studies and the callous rate is strongly tied to temps on peaches and somewhat close on apricots.
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The need of higher temperatures may be spot on. Here in Phoenix ive found the two most dead simple and reliable types to graft are peaches and cherries. I get near 99% takes with a dirty simple cleft graft.I suppose its quite possible that alot of my success is due to the fact that its rare even in the winter for us to have highs below 70 degrees.
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I’d like to see study to see what specific temps we are talking about. I did a casual experiment this year, grafting before a few days of a very warm spell and then again a week later with a few cooler days following and didn’t see a noticeable difference in percentage of takes, but I didn’t break it down mathematically
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agree. did peach and apricot graft this year. A lot of peach started budding and no sign for apricot.
Andy Mariani in Santa Clara, an heirloom grower, uses the double tongue side graft:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fstBNYNcddg
It is different, but may be the easiest graft to get right
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Even though this year only half of my peach grafts took, it was still a much better investment of time than using the method shown here. I’d spend 30 minutes to complete all those steps, a splice takes about 5. If I was changing over whole long rows in a commercial orchard the time might be worth it because of the need for conformity there- especially for harvest.
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Hi alan I’m franky from India Punjab temperature here is very high 48 degree centigrade at this time of year when is the right time to graft in winters temperature is - 3 degree centigrades and in February its around 18 to 27 degrees centigrades and increases everyday there on
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Are you asking for suggestion on how to graft peaches?
Are peaches commonly grown in your area?
Are you interested in grafting peaches in the spring?
If so, When in the spring that your local temperature reaches 20-24 Celcius?
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I didn’t get this note until today, Franky. If you search the forum, there’s been a lot said about grafting peaches. This year I must of made about 100 peach grafts and almost all of them took, but that hardly makes me an expert on the subject of spring grafting peaches. However, I don’t think it’s really all that complicated now that I know not to tightly wrap the wood when in storage. I use a simple splice graft and believe trees should be leafed out, growing vigorously and temps between 65-80 degrees F or so to get best success. I’m sure you can do the conversion to C.
I use electric tape to connect the scion to the trees shoot I’m grafting to and wrap the exposed scion wood with a type of parafilm called Buddy Tape. It is thinner and more stretchy than other types of parafilm tape.
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I pretty much agree with what Alan wrote on spring grafting. Just about the only difference is that I prefer temps a bit warmer. I don’t like to spring graft peaches until the daytime high is at least 75F for the next week. I’d prefer the daytime high to be in the 80s. Any daytime highs above 90 gives me poor peach grafting results.
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Thanks all for your inputs. @alan i have converted the data and it come to 21 degree centigrades to 29 degree Centigrade. But when i grafted it was evening around 6 pm and temperature was nearly 32 degree centigrade and was upto 26 degrees till next morning 11 am. Will it be successful. Today is third day and it rained heavily last night (grafts were covered with large cement bag) bringing the temperature down to your given temperature range. Till writing of this msg temp is 70 Fahrenheit. I did 7 grafts to increase the chances to success. Thank you in advance. I did grafting on 7 year old tree. Cut it from 5 feet height and next day grafted 7 scions of early grand peach onto heirloom variety
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Going over my notes, this year the main difference seems to be that later grafts were much more successful, regardless of whether temps following were in the mid 60’s or the 80’s. However, it’s a bit hard to tell because the temps fluctuated after grafting and we don’t know for how many days grafts might be affected by temps.
What amazes me is that as far as I can see, not a single one of my E. plum grafts took this season and they’ve never been a problem before. The only difference may be that I grafted them a little early. Sure didn’t hurt my J. plum takes at all as almost every graft took and the early grafting has led to huge growth. Next year I will time my E. plum grafts with my peaches.
Thank you Mamwaung on the tip to graft J. plums relatively early. I wonder why E plums reacted so differently.
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thank you so much! I had virtually nil with peaches last year… only 2 out of 25… but all the apples took. I think you are right,… the growth was just not active enough. I am feeling more confident to give it a go again this year.
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